Apax goes double or nothing in big software bet
Posted by Brenon Daly on April 5, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly Apax Partners is going double or nothing in the latest addition to its software portfolio. The buyout firm plans to spend a total of $2bn to put together a pair of old-line ERP vendors, Epicor Software and Activant Solutions. And it is very much a ‘paired’ deal. In fact, according to terms, [...]
Lawson: silence, suitors and synergy
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 31, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly If Lawson Software had held its scheduled call later this afternoon to discuss its third-quarter earnings report, we suspect that attendance would have been a bit higher than usual. Instead, the old-line ERP vendor scrapped it, citing the two-week-old unsolicited offer from industry consolidator Infor Global Solutions. (Those sorts of things tend [...]
Lawson ‘Infor-med’ of unsolicited offer
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 14, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly In the middle of last year, we penciled out a takeout scenario for Lawson Software that gave the old-line maker of ERP software an equity value of about $1.7bn. Turns out we were off by just $100m. On Friday, the acquisitive, private equity-backed rollup machine Infor Global Solutions floated an unsolicited $1.8bn [...]
SAP’s ‘dilutive’ deal and larger M&A implications
Posted by Brenon Daly on November 29, 2010
by Brenon Daly, China Martens The jury’s decision to order SAP to pay $1.3bn to Oracle for stealing software and support material stands as the largest award for the theft of IP in the software industry. (As one banker deadpanned: “I think the TomorrowNow acquisition is dilutive.”) But the implications of the three-week trial extend [...]
A severe case of buyer’s remorse for SAP
Posted by Brenon Daly on November 24, 2010
Contact: China Martens Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Would SAP still have gone ahead with the $10m January 2005 purchase of fledgling third-party apps support player TomorrowNow (TN) had it had any inkling then of the financial cost more than five years later (a $1.3bn payout to Oracle and a ton of legal fees), as [...]
Oracle parlays new interest in chips into small stake in Mellanox
Posted by Brenon Daly on October 29, 2010
Contact: John Abbott When Oracle started hinting recently about its growing interest in chip vendors, Mellanox Technologies was at the top of our list of potential acquisition candidates. It turns out that Oracle is indeed interested in Mellanox, but only in a chunk of it. Oracle said earlier this week that it bought 10% of [...]
Is GeoLearning the next to go?
Posted by Brenon Daly on October 15, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly While the employment market may still be sluggish, the market for software that helps companies with their employees is bustling. We recently noted that both the number of deals and spending in the human capital management (HCM) market so far this year is rivaling the records set when the overall M&A market [...]
HCM deal flow nears high-water mark
Posted by Brenon Daly on September 29, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly Dealmaking in the human capital management (HCM) market has surged in recent months, pushing spending to near-record levels. So far this year, we’ve tallied 36 HCM transactions, with an aggregate value of $1.9bn. That basically matches the high-water mark of $2.1bn in the sector set during the first three quarters of 2007. [...]
Looking at Lawson
Posted by Brenon Daly on June 16, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly What was shaping up as an explosive showdown between Carl Icahn and Genzyme has been defused ahead of today’s board meeting at the biotech company. By adding two nominees selected by Icahn to the expanded board of directors, Genzyme avoided the full-blown proxy fight that had been brewing. With that matter settled, [...]
Deltek deal shows Atlantic trade winds are blowing
Posted by Brenon Daly on June 7, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly As the hackneyed old phrase goes, there is opportunity in crisis. We were musing on that as we watched the euro plummet at the end of last week to a four-year low against the dollar. With countries such as Greece, Portugal and, most recently, Hungary unable or unwilling to run balanced books, [...]
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